Energy and Climate in the Urban Built Environment

Asimakopoulos, D. N.

doi:10.4324/9781315073774

Cited by 253 publications

(241 citation statements)

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“…For a surface-air system in an urban built environment, this means that all the energy gains from solar radiation (short-wave) or from anthropogenic heat go somewhere by energy losses in one of three ways, including [15,17,26] (1) convection, to warm up the air in the form of sensible heat (longwave); (2) evaporation (heats the water in the system) and transpiration (water transpires from vegetation) in the form of latent heat; and (3) net energy transferred to other systems (net horizontal heat advection), or by energy stored in the opaque elements (buildings, roads, etc.) ( Figure 1).…”

Section: Thermal Balance In the Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sensible heat flux is the main mechanism for dissipating radiative energy in urban environments [17]. In the urban built environment, sensible heat exchange can be affected by urban geometry, wind flow and the temperature difference between the air and the adjacent surfaces [25].…”

Section: Sensible Heat Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It creates relatively hot and cool spots in the urban environment, which induces exchange of heat and moisture between them [25,32,33]. Research indicates that, in metropolitan areas, this heat flux is negligible, but it might be obvious at the boundary between urban and rural areas [17].…”

Section: Horizontal Heat Advectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Urbanization affects climate variations principally by changing the natural environment, such as modifying the surface albedo and roughness, thermal and hydrological properties of the ground surface. The main modifications can be summarized as follows [15][16][17]:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The important factors in terms of the urban built environment have been explored and summarized by many researchers [17,[20][21][22], covering canyon geometry, building materials, evaporative cooling sources (vegetation or water body), the greenhouse effect, anthropogenic heat sources, and wind patterns. Strategies to mitigate UHI intensity and improve the urban thermal environment have been investigated and proposed for various climate backgrounds with respect to urban design, among which urban geometry and vegetation are regarded as the most influential urban design features [17,22,23]. It is therefore very important for urban designers and architects to understand the relationship between climate indicators and urban design features and to be able to anticipate the potential impact on the outdoor thermal performance of proposed urban geometric characteristics in the early design stage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

et al. 2017

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This paper presents a literature review on urban design indicators addressing the impact of urban geometry and vegetation on the outdoor thermal environment at the pedestrian level, as urban geometry and vegetation have been regarded as the most influential urban design factors that affect outdoor microclimate. The thermal balance concept is first introduced to elaborate how each component of energy fluxes is affected by the urban built environment, which helps to explore the underlying thermophysical mechanisms of how urban design modifies the outdoor thermal environment. The literature on numerous urban design descriptors addressing urban geometric characteristics is categorized into five groups in this paper according to the design features that the parameters entail, including land use intensity, building form, canyon geometry, space enclosure and descriptive characteristics. The literature on urban vegetation descriptors is reviewed together, followed by the combined effect of urban geometry and vegetation. This paper identifies a series of important urban design parameters and shows that the impact of design parameters on thermal environment varies with time, season, local climate and urban contexts. Contradictory impacts often occur between daytime and nighttime, or different seasons, which requests trade-offs to be achieved when proposing design strategies.

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Section: Thermal Balance In the Urban Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sensible Heat Fluxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Horizontal Heat Advectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

et al. 2017

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Urban Heat Island Effect Concept and Its Assessment Using Satellite‐Based Remote Sensing Data

Dijoo

2021

Geographic Information Science for Land Resource Management

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Urban heat island effects on growing seasons and heating and cooling degree days in Madison, Wisconsin USA

Schatz

Kucharik

2016

Intl Journal of Climatology

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Urban areas tend to be warmer than their rural surroundings, a phenomenon known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect. UHIs are nearly always described in terms of temperature. However, UHIs can also be described using derived climate indices, including growing season length, growing degree days (GDDs), and heating and cooling degree days, which may have more direct ecological and economic significance than temperature alone. To characterize UHI effects on these basic climate parameters, we used over 3 years of continuously collected temperature data from up to 150 locations in and around Madison, Wisconsin, USA, an urban area of population 402 000 surrounded by lakes and a rural landscape of agriculture, forests, wetlands, and grasslands. Compared to rural areas, Madison's UHI extended the freeze-free season by several weeks each year. However, it only shifted the onset of spring and fall (represented by 10-day moving average temperature crossing seasonal thresholds) by 1 day or less in spring and by a few days to a week in fall. The different effects on freeze dates versus running-mean temperatures were primarily because the UHI could affect temperatures during individual freeze events much more than it could influence regional seasonal temperature trends. Urban effects on the meteorological growing season were nearly always greater in fall than in spring. We hypothesize that this is due to seasonal differences in sub-surface temperatures, with urban and rural areas presumably having more uniform sub-surface temperatures in spring after being frozen throughout the winter, contributing to weaker UHI effects in spring than in fall. In terms of degree days, densely built urban areas averaged 14% (209) more GDDs, 25% (117) more cooling degree days, and 6% (284) fewer heating degree days than rural areas, indicating that the UHI could have significant impacts on energy consumption in Madison.

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Energy and Climate in the Urban Built Environment

Cited by 253 publications

References 0 publications

The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

The Impact of Urban Design Descriptors on Outdoor Thermal Environment: A Literature Review

Urban Heat Island Effect Concept and Its Assessment Using Satellite‐Based Remote Sensing Data

Urban heat island effects on growing seasons and heating and cooling degree days in Madison, Wisconsin USA

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